Eight Texas activists now face potential 15-year sentences after a federal jury convicted them of planning an armed attack on an ICE facility. According to Garrison Davis reporting on *It Could Happen Here*, the group described their July 4th event as a noise demonstration, but prosecutors secured the first federal terrorism convictions of Antifa members under the Trump administration by proving it was a coordinated, armed strike.
The government’s case turned on a digital trail the activists left in their own phones. They used Signal for planning but failed to adjust notification settings, leaving incoming messages preserved in Apple’s internal memory even after they deleted the app. This evidence, detailed on the podcast, gave prosecutors a direct roadmap of the conspiracy, including discussions about using rifles.
The defendants’ legal strategy collapsed in pre-trial rulings. Judge Mark Pittman barred them from claiming self-defense, ruling that an officer who draws his weapon does not use excessive force if he doesn’t fire first. In this case, defendant B. Song shot the officer in the neck with an AR-15 before the officer returned fire.
Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here:
- The fact that he had drawn his gun would have been enough to at least argue self defense.
- Police officers have the right to pull guns on whoever they want pretty much.
Internal group friction, revealed by cooperating witnesses, showed some members saw the rifles as a deterrent, while Song allegedly advocated using suppressive fire to liberate detainees. These convictions mark a definitive, heavy precedent: planning armed action against a federal facility, documented in your own messages, can be prosecuted as domestic terrorism, moving it from protest into a different legal category entirely.
